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Thank you to all of the Bay Area playwrights who submitted to the Bay One Acts Festival. The submission window for BOA has now closed. If you submitted a script, but did not receive a script submission confirmation email, then please email boaliterary@gmail.com .

Stay tuned for BIG BOA news!

In honor of tax day, we are giving you an EXTENSION!

We are now accepting script submissions through MAY 15th.

Don’t stress Bay Area playwrights. You still have time to submit your one act play to be considered for the 2014 Bay One Acts Festival. So keep those ideas coming! Don’t miss this opportunity to have your voice, your story, your ideas, and your inspiration be a part of this annual celebration of the Bay Area theater community and the short play form. We will also be in touch with all of our playwrights who have already submitted their scripts with confirmation information soon. Click HERE for our BOA 2014 Script Submission Guidelines.

From left to right: Nicole Hammersla in Twice As Bright, photo by Clay Robeson. Sarah Moser and Megan Trout in A Three Little Dumplings Adventure, phot by Jessica Holt. James Mayagoitia in Cloud Flower, photo by Clay Robeson.

SAN FRANCISCO, CA, February 13, 2012 – The Bay One Acts Festival, created by over seventy artists and ten local theater companies in partnership, is proud to announce its 2012 festival program line-up. The only festival in the region that produces an anthology of the plays selected for production each year, BOA features two full programs of intrepid new theater running in repertory, and takes place Wednesdays – Sundays, April 22 – May 12, 2012, at the Boxcar Theatre in San Francisco. Tickets are $25-$45 at the door or online at www.BayOneActs.org (tickets on sale March 15).

BOA 2012 features a hand-picked selection of ten bold and adventurous short plays by local Bay Area playwrights Stuart Eugene Bousel, Erin Bregman, Anthony Clarvoe, Christopher Chen, Megan Cohen, Bennett Fisher, Sam Leichter, Ken Slattery and new devised pieces by 11th Hour Ensemble and Ragged Wing Ensemble. Each play is then assigned to a company who is tasked with producing the piece. BOA 2012 producing partners include 11th Hour Ensemble, Instrumental Theatre, No Nude Men, PianoFight, Playwrights Foundation, Precarious Theatre, Ragged Wing Ensemble, SF Theater Pub, Sleepwalkers, and Threshold, all of which share a commitment to the development and production of new work. BOA has tapped local directors Paul Cello, M. Graham Smith, Jill MacLean, Ariane Owens, Rob Ready, Megan Trout, James Mayagoitia, Sara Staley, Claire Rice, Amy Sass and BOA Artistic Director Jessica Holt will also helm a play.

Festival highlights include: Glickman Award-winner Anthony Clarvoe’s return to Bay Area theater with his first fully-produced new play, Cello, specifically commissioned for this year’s BOA festival. Ken Slattery’s Death to the Audience directed by M. Graham Smith, who will also premiere Slattery’s Truffaldino Says No this summer with Shotgun Players. Sam Leichter’s In Bed, which is the third installment of The Donna DeSantos Trilogy, and the third play in the series to debut at BOA. Megan Cohen’s Three Little Dumplings Go Bananas, is a companion piece to last year’s A Three Little Dumplings Adventure which was an audience favorite and received high critical praise. This year’s festival also features two devised theater pieces, 11th Hour Ensemble’s The Seagull Project, a take on Chekhov’s The Seagull, and Ragged Wing Ensemble’s Maybe Baby, part of The Fortune Project. This year the festival will also feature post-show spotlights where producing partners, directors, and playwrights will talk about the new work development process.

To accomplish its goal of supporting, promoting and producing short plays by San Francisco Bay Area playwrights, BOA partners with ten local companies who share the cost of production and collaborate to turn ten separate plays into two full-formed programs. The festival creates an instant theater community in San Francisco – building bridges between companies, cultivating connections between artists, and encouraging enthusiasm for the short play form. It’s also become a springboard for extraordinary new partnerships and collaborations between artists and companies, which continue to enrich the local landscape long after the festival ends.

Being a dramaturg is somewhat like being an editor: one gets to focus on the writing and the writer, rather than the audience or on the methods of production. I got a chance to chat with each of the writers at Bay One Acts about their work, how they get it done, and what they’re looking forward to from BOA and beyond.

Zulueta: I’m here with Sharif Abu-Hamdeh, author of CANARY YELLOW. Have you worked with director Sara Judge of Theatre Pub previously?

Abu-Hamdeh: I haven’t worked with Sara before, but we’ve talked on the phone, and I think she’s pretty awesome.

Zulueta: And is this your first year at the festival?

Abu-Hamdeh: It’s my first year with Bay One Acts, and I think they’re fantabulous.

Zulueta: How’d you hear about it?

Abu-Hamdeh: Ben Fisher asked if I’d like to work with Sara and Theatre Pub to put up the play for BOA, and I thought it’d be fun.

Zulueta: How long did it take you to write this play?

Abu-Hamdeh: I wrote the play after got home from a night out in San Francisco with some friends. I think I finished at about six in the morning.

Zulueta: Fun indeed. Is BOA X the premiere of this production?

Abu-Hamdeh: This is the first production of Canary Yellow. It was a part of the Buriel Clay Playwrights Festival in the summer of 2010.

Zulueta: So while Buriel Clay only did a reading, the play receives a fully staged production at BOA.

Abu-Hamdeh: Yes. I’m excited to see it for the first time.

Zulueta: You’re not the only one. In three words: who or what influenced you during the creation of this play, or inspired you to write it in the first place?

Abu-Hamdeh: A pretty girl.

Zulueta: In two words: what unforeseen change or collaboration is taking place in your show?

Abu-Hamdeh: Passing moment.

Zulueta: And your favorite children’s games?

Abu-Hamdeh: I spent a lot of time on a rocking horse, listening to my parent’s records. That was my favorite past time. My favorite game was building forts in the back yard with my friends, and then throwing dirt clods and rocks at each other.

Zulueta: With those last three answers, I’m now looking forward to seeing your piece paired with the fleeting romance of Daniel Heath’s Twice As Bright in Program 2. CANARY YELLOW opens on March 6, and with a special post-show talk on Wednesday March 9th. No dirt clods required.

Being a dramaturg is somewhat like being an editor: one gets to focus on the writing and the writer, rather than the audience or on the methods of production. I got a chance to chat with each of the writers at Bay One Acts about their work, how they get it done, and what they’re looking forward to from BOA and beyond. Back in the less wintry portion of February, I had a delightful interview with Megan Cohen, author of A Three Little Dumplings’ ADVENTURE.

Zulueta: Megan, you’re working with artistic director Jessica Holt of Three Wise Monkeys, and host of the Bay One Acts festival. What privileges and duties come with the turf?

Cohen: When you have a collaborator like Jessica, you need to always bring the best edition of your brain to the table.

Zulueta: How does that compare to your normal playwriting and production process?

Cohen: I’ve worked with people who are more in-your-face and demanding (“Yes, but what does this scene really mean?”), with people who are less interested in collaboration (“So, this is what this scene really means”), and with people who are so hands-off they barely acknowledge that the writer exists (“You’re invited to the show, if we remember to tell you when it’s running”). So, my privilege (and duty!) right now is to make sure I support Jessica’s process however I can. She emailed me photos of potential props yesterday to get my input— a director like that makes it your job to live up to the opportunity.

Zulueta: What opportunities will become available to you as a result of having A THREE LITTLE DUMPLINGS ADVENTURE featured at BOA?

Cohen: Well, I’m no mystic, and have no top-secret insight about what will happen in the future, but I do know that BOA last year led me directly to development and production opportunities with local companies involved in the festival, not to mention friendships and collaborations with individual artists who can drink me under the table, or at least try.

Cohen: It helped break open a lot of the SF scene for me, and that’s a real true science fact. My hope for A THREE LITTLE DUMPLINGS ADVENTURE this year is that it doesn’t ruin everything I’ve built since BOA 9. If I let myself dream a little bigger, I would say I hope that this play helps me connect with all the artists and groups who are new to the festival this year. Who knows where anything will lead– the biggest opportunity of any production is the chance to engage as many audience members as happen to have the particular palette to enjoy the kind of work I do, and that opportunity is certainly enough to be satisfying.

Zulueta: How many Bay One Acts have you participated in previously, and who directed and produced?

Cohen: I had a piece in last year’s festival, The Great Double-Check, produced by Three Wise Monkeys and directed by Claire Zawa. I haven’t pursued another production for that script (yet), but it was the first time I did on-the-spot revisions during rehearsals, a really liberating experience which continues to inform my writing practice.

Zulueta: A THREE LITTLE DUMPLINGS ADVENTURE has debuted at other venues prior to BOA X. Is this round showing you new facets of the script?

Cohen: Except for a childhood adaptation of Alice In Wonderland (which featured a rapping hatter based on the very of-the-moment M.C. Hammer), A THREE LITTLE DUMPLINGS ADVENTURE was the first stage play that I wrote, my sophomore year of college. It got a professional production on my first post-graduation script submission, an experience which was definitely my gateway drug. I hadn’t even skimmed through the text in probably 3 or 4 years, until I suddenly bolted awake one morning this past summer and started revising it, streamlining the structure, buttressing the weak points, tweaking the jokes and monologues, and measuring everything I’ve learned about writing since I started. So, seeing this work again in its new version is sort of like looking through a dusty photo album from the attic, except all the baby pictures have been airbrushed to be extra-flattering.

Zulueta: In three words: who or what influenced you during the creation of this play?

Cohen: Just looking around.

Zulueta: In two words: what unforeseen change or collaboration is taking place in your show?

Cohen: Because peanut butter sandwiches wrapped in tinfoil are what American kids eat for lunch. They’re something you almost never make for yourself, someone makes them for you. (Since the Dumplings live in a world of TV-perfect parenting, Wonderbread ™ is the preferable loaf, and Skippy ™ is the preferable peanut butter.)

Zulueta: Pack a nutritious and balanced lunch, head for the Boxcar Theatre, and dig into the wierdtacular THREE LITTLE DUMPLINGS ADVENTURE. The show opens on March 6, runs through the 26th, and features a special post-show talk after the Wednesday March 16th performance.